To the Editor:

This Friday, The Hoya published an editorial titled “’Ultraque Unum’ Mistranslated” [A2, Mar. 21, 2014] The piece, which treats Thomas Lloyd and Giuliana Cucci’s drag depiction of prominent Catholics and university administrators, offers support for Lloyd and Cucci’s message, but gives no endorsement to their tactics. Instead, the piece claims the potentially inflammatory depictions are unclear: That by failing to explain their work, Lloyd and Cucci have not fulfilled their side of the dialogue. Here The Hoya gravely misses the mark.

By insisting that an ultimately playful genderqueer image requires explanation, The Hoya insinuates the real problem: That for genderqueer people at Georgetown, the very act of being oneself becomes political. Why should we bat an eye if John DeGioia or Pope Francis were to dress in drag? Or if their gender identity were something other than their sex at birth? Why does a genderqueer image at Georgetown demand explanation, while a gender conforming image does not?

The Hoya recognizes correctly that some members of the campus community might and do take offence at Lloyd and Cucci’s design. But if Lloyd and Cucci’s objective is merely to expose the ugliness of a gut reaction against people and images that are gender non-conforming, then they have succeeded without further explanation. Not, however, that they have been withholding. Lloyd and Cucci have engaged actively and admirably in the dialogue they’ve opened. And in fact even with the brief caption – Ultraque Unum — they speak volumes of purpose to us: [To make] both one and [break] down the dividing wall of enmity. [To] create … one new person in place of the two, thus establishing peace, and … putting that enmity to death by it.

Matthew Quallen